Gov. Greg Abbott’s appointees who run the Texas Lottery have punted to the 2025 Legislature the question of whether ticket sales involving phone apps and middlemen violate state law.
Last April’s $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot was won on one of nearly $11 million of tickets sold to a New Jersey-based entity, at a nondescript storefront in a strip center in Colleyville. The win stoked a legislative controversy over phone app-assisted purchases of tickets for state-run lottery games.
The third-largest lottery payout in Texas history wasn’t on a ticket sold at a convenience store. Rather, it went to a winner who chose to remain anonymous on a purchase made through processes whose labels and descriptions are hotly disputed.
Basically, orders made via cellphone or computer are fulfilled by employees of large purchasing groups, some of which use courier services to dispatch people to brick-and-mortar locations licensed by the Texas Lottery.
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“The ticket was not purchased through a courier service,” lottery spokesman Steve Helm said in a recent email, referring to the April 22 Lotto Texas drawing winner.
In the 2023 legislative session, Edgewood Republican Sen. Bob Hall unsuccessfully sought to ban ticket sales using phone apps and third-party couriers. He argued that lottery officials are lax.
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